tl;dr: cleared brush only to find a pile of clay.. looking for ideas on how to grow a lawn on it.
Moved into a new property in Virginia where the backyard backs up to a wooded area. The brush and vines from the woods had taken over 5-6 feet from the fence along the entire back side of the property.
I wanted to clear all that out and expand the lawn, only to discover the absolute worst soil I've ever seen. It's just pure clay.
The previous owners put geo-textile on top of it (part of it is visible in the first photo) – I'm not sure why, but that had been taken over by weeds/vines too. There are utilities that go under this area (cable, internet, and power), so I assume the utility dug up this area and ruined the top soil by bringing up all the clay.
In some places the clay area is 1-1.5 foot higher than the rest of the lawn. But it looks very flat in the pictures for some reason.
I'm new to lawn care in general, so I'm hoping to get some ideas from all of you. What're my options?
Do I need to hire someone and rent equipment to take out the top layer of the clay and add in top soil? I really hope I don't have to do this right now due to the expense.
by 1lesspanda
4 Comments
not really, if you dont add any topsoil at all, chances are it wont even germinate.
I would try to add washed sand & topsoil, then dig it up and mix it, so its not 100% clay. then seed
if you try to seed on top of this and the lawn does germinate, it definitely wont do well and will be overrun by moss pretty quickly
That’s fill dirt, you’ll need to get bags of top soil or bulk delivery. I did the same thing, cleared brush, tilled the dirt and layer sod on top. It never took and basically turned into a patch of weeds
Looks more like a old creek bed
Earth right soil conditioner 🤙🏼🤙🏼